Officer took wife and mistress on holidays
A leading antiterrorist police officer has been jailed for ten months after admitting using his Scotland Yard credit card to take his wife and mistress on luxury holidays.
Detective Sergeant Richard de Cadenet is the first officer to be jailed as part of an investigation that led to the cancellation of more than 1,400 Metropolitan Police credit cards.
The officer, who worked on a number of high-profile operations including the 7/7 attacks on London, was jailed yesterday by Southwark Crown Court. He admitted illicitly spending more than £73,000 on his corporate credit card during a 15-month period.
The court heard that the 39-year-old officer, the son of Alain de Cadenet, the former racing driver, and the brother of Amanda de Cadenet, the television presenter, used the credit card in an attempt to buy “affection”.
David Levy, for the prosecution, said that the exact amount of illicit expenditure by de Cadenet amounted to £73,669.18.
He spent £6,452 on a holiday in Thailand and a further £9,000 on a trip to Mexico. The card was also used to pay for a box at a Premier League football ground in which de Cadenet’s estranged father had been entertained, along with others.
A further £5,910 was spent in supermarkets, £3,500 on clothes, £3,000 on electrical goods and cash withdrawals of more than £18,000 were made. Only 28 of the 415 payments made by the card were legitimate, the court was told.
Mr Levy said the policy that obtained at the time in the Metropolitan force had been for the cards to allow officers to pay for legitimate expenses such as hotel bills and travelling while working outside London.
He said that officers were supposed to submit a monthly “reconciliation” of their expenditure to the Metropolitan Police Authority but that this had not taken place in the case of de Cadenet.
Neil Saunders, for the defence, said that de Cadenet had joined the Metropolitan Police in 1996 after serving in the RAF. At police training in Hendon, North London, he had emerged as a “class leader”, he said, and had subsequently received glowing reports for his work as a police officer.
But he said de Cadenet, who served with the RAF in Bosnia and during the Gulf War, had begun experiencing marital difficulties, developed a drink problem and fell seriously into debt before he obtained the card.
Mr Saunders said it appeared that de Cadenet had been attempting to “buy the affections” of those who were closest to him in the misuse of the card. “He was buying what he thought was attention and affection. He was, as I have been trying to suggest, a man who was simply unable to cope,” Mr Saunders said.
De Cadenet admitted one count of misfeasance in public office.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said de Cadenet’s actions were a serious misuse of public money. Deborah Glass, London commissioner for the IPCC, said: “The taxpayers of London will rightly be concerned. I hope [the] sentence reassures them that abuse of the system will not be tolerated.”
Scotland Yard is completing checks on expenditure on 3,500 corporate charge cards in use since 2006. The Directorate of Professional Standards has referred 25 cases to the IPCC and the Metropolitan Police Authority has referred two cases.
Detective Sergeant John Gallagher, 52, who worked for the Met’s child abuse investigation unit, pleaded guilty to a £9,622 expenses scam earlier this month and was warned that he could be jailed.
Detective Constable Matthew Washington, 36, a former antiterrorism officer, has been charged with using his corporate card to spend £12,500 for personal use and is due to stand trial at Southwark Crown Court in December.
